Oil Spill Threatens Gulf Oyster Industry, Livelihoods

(July 19, 2010)—Laurentino Cardenas leaned over the edge of his narrow boat, his
hands clenched above the murky, green surface of the Gulf of Mexico's
Bayou Terrebonne. The name means "good earth" in French, and it indeed
has been good to Louisiana.

Oystermen long have scraped the Gulf's floor, clinging to metal rakes
as oysters cling to reefs, with a determination that has allowed them
to survive nature's wrath and man's mistakes. Until now.

The BP oil spill is killing off a centuries-old way of life, and
endangering one of the world's largest wild-oyster systems. Businesses
nationwide have been hurt or destroyed because Cardenas and his peers
can't work. Along the way, the oyster has become a barometer of the oil
spill's economic reach and a portent of long-term effects.

Louisiana's 1.6 million acres of public oyster beds, and more than
half of its 400,000 privately leased acres, are off-limits. Hundreds of
oystermen have stopped fishing. Processors have shut down. Gulf
restaurants have closed, and chains such as Red Lobster have yanked the
briny morsels off their menus. What supplies remain have more than
doubled in price, with some restaurateurs paying $200 for a 150-count
case.

That's only the beginning. Scientists fear generations of larvae and
mollusks could be wiped out, destroying harvests for years. The cruelest
twist: Oyster beds that survived the now-capped gusher could be leveled
by the cleanup efforts.

After the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion April 20, Louisiana
officials decided to use Mississippi River water to push back
encroaching oil. Culverts built into the river's levee system were
opened, redirecting freshwater into saltwater estuaries. The resulting
change in salinity can be fatal to the mollusks.

State scientists started checking beds two weeks ago. Their early
findings: a wide spread of dead oysters.

"There's a lot of talk that this is killing off the Gulf oyster
industry, that after [Hurricane] Katrina and this, it's the end," said
Bill Sieleg, who heads a Maryland-based oyster trade group.

European treat

Oysters are a $1 billion domestic industry and a culinary aberration:
Most seafood that Americans eat is imported. But oysters, with their
heavy shells, are expensive to ship by air. They're also considered best
eaten fresh, not frozen. So the majority of oysters we eat come from
U.S. coasts, two-thirds of which are trucked from warm Gulf waters.

Oysters long were a European treat for the rich. But it was in
Louisiana where this simple bivalve — mild in flavor and traditionally
cheap enough for almost anyone to buy a platter — was reclaimed as the
Everyman mollusk. Grocers across the country stocked mounds of Crassostrea
virginica, allowing cooks to whip up oyster dressing at
Thanksgiving.

The oyster is to Louisiana what corn is to Iowa or oranges to Florida
— part sustenance, part identity. The ingenuity of the region's chefs
turned out oyster fritters, oysters Bienville and oyster po'boys. They
gave birth to oysters Rockefeller, reportedly named after oil baron John
D. Rockefeller — the only thing richer than the sauce.

So the loss strikes like a bomb in this state.

"Oysters are part of everyone's upbringing. It's family history,"
said Susan Spicer, a prominent New Orleans chef who is suing BP for the
loss of local seafood supplies. "It's unthinkable, a future without
them."

At Felix's Restaurant & Oyster Bar, on a brick-lined stretch of
the French Quarter in New Orleans, the menu proclaimed that it "only
serves LOUISIANA oysters." Owner John Rotonti can't bring himself to
print a correction; homegrown oysters were the heart of his business. He
wrestled with a disquieting truth: Felix's slowly was changing from a
Gulf restaurant into one that's simply on the Gulf.

"It's like part of the restaurant is gone," he said.

Rotonti is using Texas and Florida oysters. His manager called
Connecticut to do the unthinkable: Buy Blue Point oysters from the cold
waters of the Atlantic — iconic of New England chowder and the Kennedys,
not of Creole spice and the soft drawl of the Deep South.

But he may not get them. Many farmers elsewhere have sold their
harvests. There are also fewer to buy. It's not clear why, but the ocean
waters off Washington state and Oregon are changing: As much as 60
percent of larvae in area hatcheries have died in recent years. On the
East Coast, in Chesapeake Bay, beds are recovering from overfishing,
disease and pollution.

Americans willing to settle for smoked or canned oysters are in luck.
Asian firms, which dominate that market, assure that holiday supplies
will be plentiful.

But few foreign companies meet the Food and Drug Administration's
strict water-testing requirements that would allow them to sell live
oysters in the United States. Meanwhile, prospects of domestic
production expanding soon are dim. Regulation of coastal management is
strict. Land is scarce. It can take up to four years for an oyster to
grow big enough to sell.

Their value isn't just monetary. Oysters help filter the ocean. Their
shells shelter other sea life. Their meat feeds snapper, black sea bass
and other creatures. They are "the fabric that everything else builds
upon," said Michael Blum, an assistant professor of ecology and
evolutionary biology at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Economic ripples

State and federal officials started closing oyster beds April 29, and
economic ripples were felt far and wide. Oysterman Cardenas and his
peers were among the first to hurt.

Born in Querétaro, a landlocked stretch of central Mexico, Cardenas
never was enrolled in school. As a teen, he heard a woman gossip about
fortunes being made in the Gulf in oysters. So Cardenas sneaked across
the border in 1980. He arrived at the fishing town of Houma, La., 57
miles southwest of New Orleans. He was 14.

He married, became a citizen and bought a little white house. Not the
riches he heard about as a child. But enough.

Now, unable to pay bills with fishing, Cardenas and other out-of-work
oystermen tried to land jobs with BP to clean the Gulf. Out-of-state
vessels vied for the $1,200 to $3,000 daily pay. Some were lucky. Not
Cardenas. He passes time playing checkers.

But oystermen weren't the only ones affected.

Sales are evaporating at Natural Fibre Products in New Orleans, which
sold the burlap bags that transported Cardenas' 100-pound loads from
boat to box. Two employees have been laid off; one ekes out 15 hours a
week.

At Allen-Bailey Tag & Label in Caledonia, N.Y., which made the
shellfish tags affixed to each bag, sales have sagged. On top of that,
the firm found out in June that it had won a bid it made before the oil
spill to sell as many as 7.8 million tags in Louisiana. Tens of
thousands of dollars now could be lost.

Broken shells were sold to Steve Ortego, whose Houma firm used the
shards in road projects. Layered under limestone, they kept wet soil
from seeping through. Two of his vendors have shut down. The other two
struggle to stay open.

Cardenas sold his catch to Mike and Steve Voisin, owners of Motivatit
Seafoods in Houma. Their forefathers, who emigrated from France on the
eve of the American Revolution, plucked seafood from the Gulf. Before
the oil spill, the Voisins' two processing plants employed 200 and
handled about 360,000 oysters daily.

Inside the plants, oysters clattered on conveyor belts. They were
washed and run through a pressurized system to kill bacteria. The belts
don't run as often now. Workers handle 92 percent fewer oysters and
scrape by on 30-hour weeks.

In a place where people see many things as God's will, the Voisins
turned to their faith. Mike prayed. Steve kept his Bible in the office
and read five to six chapters daily. They assured people these dark
times were temporary. The beds, they said, were fine.

At home, the brothers wondered whether they were next to closing.

As of July, six major oyster processors in Louisiana and Mississippi
had closed, including P&J Oyster in New Orleans. P&J survived
the Depression and Katrina, but not this.

As Gulf oyster supplies faded, panic rippled across the nation's
maritime food chain. Bill Guerra paced a sidewalk one morning, waiting
for a Motivatit delivery. The haggard general manager of King Oyster, a
seafood distributor in downtown Los Angeles, resembled a defeated boxer.

He handled 5,000 cases weekly last year. In May: 300. In June: 15.

"This is going to put me out of business," Guerra said.

Lisa Halili's Prestige Oysters in San Leon, Texas, is one of the
largest private leaseholders of oyster beds. Hurricane Ike doused them
with sediment in 2008. Hermit crabs also have swiped meat. "It's like
locusts come in and take over a farmer's crop," said Halili, who's
running low again.

And 1,400 miles to the west, in Pomona, Calif., restaurant manager
Omar Quezada started placing orders for oysters from the Pacific. In the
kitchen of El 7 Mares, there were three cases of oysters: one from
Motivatit, two from Baja California. The mollusks from Mexico were
bigger, saltier and had a black ring circling the dense meat.

The price had increased, but they were available and met federal
regulations. Quezada wondered whether Gulf oysters would ever return.
There were media reports of oil found in blue-crab larvae from Louisiana
to Florida. Crabs can move. Oysters can't.

His customers wanted oysters. Yet for the first time, they feared
eating seafood from the Gulf of Mexico.

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